Food historian Kurlansky brings to light a genuine culinary and historical keepsake archived in the Library of Congress: in the late 1930s, the WPA farmed out an ambitious writing project—an encyclopedia of American food and food traditions. In his abridged yet remarkable version, he presents what some of the thousands of writers (among them Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston and Nelson Algren) found: America, its food, its people and its culture, at the precise moment when modernism and progress were kicking into gear.

This delicious saga of how immigrant food became American food follows European immigrants on a remarkable journey from the Ellis Island dining halls to tiny tenement kitchens, from Lower East Side pushcart markets and delicatessens out into the wider world of American cuisine.

Edgar, a San Francisco punk-turned-cheese-man, offers this informative memoir filled with sharp-witted humor that may forever change your perception of fermented dairy products. Along with telling his own story, Edgar informs readers of many aspects of the cheese movement, such as animal rights, sustainable farming practices, the politics of cheese, as well as how to identify a good parmigiano reggiano or gruyére. This book is for anyone who has eaten cheese, bought food from a grocer, or is thinking about eating cheese bought from a grocer.